Play Crack The Sky
by CassandraHolly
Summary: Tom's anorexic, Dougie's depressed and everything's a contradiction. Drabble.


_Inspired by Tom's experience with eating disordered behavior, Dougie's experience with depression and my experience with both._

* * *

_Dougie is drowning_

Depression is sinking further and further into an ocean of your own screaming thoughts. Depression is the wave that capsized your little boat in the first place, sending you spinning and struggling into the cold water. Depression is watching everybody else swim above you, their arms and legs smooth and strong while yours are like lead. Depression is trying to imitate everybody else as they bob around on the surface, but never quite getting the hang of it.

Dougie lets himself sink, watches his band members and family cut shapes in the water above. The thought crosses his mind to scream for help and he opens his mouth to do so, but salt water/crazythoughts/badthings/sadthings/madthings surge down his throat instead and he chokes on his own salt water scream.

* * *

_Tom is floating_

Anorexia is the flying rush you get from a daily intake of air and water. Anorexia is a white fog in which everyday problems seem petty and pointless, and all you have to focus on is yourself. Anorexia is finally eating and feeling the old problems crash down around you, worsened tenfold by the fact that you _ate_ something, how _could_ you? Anorexia is watching the world through tinted eyes, seeing only shape, number and food.

Tom's forgotten what it feels like to stand on firm ground. Everything is unsteady here, from the control to the floor. He keeps his body floating on air because that lessens the risk of falling, doesn't it? Tied down by only one silk- thin string (and it's called Hope, but we don't talk about that, because Hope is dangerous) he flies his way through the hunger pangs and the angry bandmates and doesn't realise the truth (not floating, _falling_) until he's going too fast to stop himself.

* * *

_Dougie is frozen_

Depression is being stuck in one place and watching the world go by around you. Depression is seeing just how much people don't need you, because they're fine and you're M.I.A, yet nobody's reported you missing. Depression is standing in the middle of an invincible ice cube while the sun beats down on everybody else, heating up their warm smiles and leaving you to shiver in the shadows.

Dougie is beginning to wonder if anybody will ever notice how far gone he is. He isn't in the same place as them anymore, not at all, yet they all seem to be getting along fine (if not better) without him. He has a theory; the ice could keep him until his heart slowed and his lips went blue and his eyes stopped moving and his chest stopped rising, but nobody would notice. And then the ice would melt into water and evaporate, and the sun would continue shining.

* * *

_Tom is spinning_

(or is it the world that's spinning?

Does it matter?)

Anorexia is never staying still because stillness admits defeat, stillness admits the bad stuff is weighing you down. Anorexia is the world coming into sharp focus and the colours brightening until they're dangerous to look at (and that doesn't fit in with the blurry whiteness that comes with not eating. But why should it? Anorexia is just one huge self-contradiction). Anorexia is flitting from person to place to person so fast they can't get a good look at you just in case they notice something amiss. Anorexia is the world turning on its axis in 24 short hours (repeat, repeat) and leaving you behind to stare at a still-full plate.

Tom gazes at his low-fat, 178 calorie Starbucks muffin because it's the only solid thing around him. His eyes flit up and he gets a glimpse of speeding cars, fast food, neon skin and _too much confusion_ before he returns to the muffin. Hands reach out and pick it apart, oh so slowly, proving that there is one thing in this world that he can do at his own speed. Tom closes his eyes. Outside, the world orbits the sun, and Tom orbits the need to be empty.

* * *

Dougie is blurring the lines between dead and alive.

_Tom is walking the lines of existence and non- existence._

Dougie is losing the ability to hear or see anybody apart from himself.

_Tom is turning his back on everybody but himself._

Dougie is losing his mind, and Tom is losing his body,

_and they're both losing themselves._


End file.
